Hunted
by inayeth
Summary: In which the Shinigami decides to resurrect Itachi with a little more heart and a little less objectivity, but in a very different universe.


A/N: There are some story ideas that grip you. No matter how much you tell yourself not to start, you just cannot help yourself.

This story is one of them.

_~Hunted~_

There were times in my life when I kinda sorta wanted to roll over and go back to sleep.

Yes.

I, Clan-killer Itachi, world-proclaimed S-ranked shinobi and one of the biggest baddest motherfuckers this side of anywhere wanted a day off sometimes.

It was the least the Goddamn Kami _owed_ me.

My entire clusterfuck of a life was so complicated and exhausting, it could not be put into words.

But let it not be said that I hadn't tried.

I'd tried. In fact I'd tried so hard that I'd burned myself at the stake.

If people were judged based on how they lived their life, I was condemned to the deepest, darkest corner of whatever it was the afterlife offered.

Sometime after I'd learned that I was going to die, and not because of an enemy I could not overcome (I hadn't come across one of those in like, ever), but because I was just sick, I liked to sit with my sole companion, a giant man-fish wielding a swordfish(Hah!) and joke a little about what I wanted written on my gravestone.

Kisame quite liked the phrase:

_My eyes are on you._

I didn't get it. I would be dead. My eyes wouldn't be on anything. If that was meant to be a play on the sharingan, it was a terrible one. Conversely, I wondered if Kisame had meant to say, 'Your eyes will be inside my head'. Cause at least that made sense.

My personal favourite was, and this wasn't something I'd told Kisame:

_Here lies Uchiha Itachi. He tried. He failed._

It seemed... fitting.

The thing I had looked forward to the most, for a little under half of my life was dying at the hands of my little brother.

Yeah. I know.

Most elder brothers simply pawned off domestic chores on their younger siblings. But Sasuke and I had next level shit going on. Our very own special kind of brotherly bonding, involving knives and swords and crazy bigass fire jutsus blowing up everything.

And that is how I died too. It was like a dream come true. I kid you not. Like really.

I dreamed about kicking Sasukes ass six ways to Sunday and then keeling over. If I lost to my little brother even when sick and on my last leg... it would be embarrassing at the very least.

And then I'd have to have my gravestone marking changed to:

_Here lies Itachi Uchiha. He died from an extreme case of embarrassment._

Anyway, after everything I'd been through (including my own death), I wanted to be at peace. I wanted to rest. I wanted to sleep. It should've been easy.

Seeing as how I was dead.

So, imagine my surprise when my eyes somehow opened to the world of the living, and the very familiar face of my mother, the very same one I'd murdered in cold blood, swam in front of my face.

She was making faces at me.

"Say Mama Itachiii-kun. Maama. Ma-ma!"

I quite literally froze, mind whirling with half a dozen questions. Was this what the afterlife was? Were people reborn to the same parents in the afterlife and grew up like they did in the elemental nations? Or was it something else? Something special prepared just for me?

"Itachi-kun? Are you not feeling well?"

I swung around in the air as my mother picked up unceremoniously and carried me... somewhere.

If this was a twisted joke the shinigami played on everyone who died, I would most certainly kill him. Somebody, somewhere, had to have developed a ninjutsu that could kill the Kami. And if there weren't any... Well, I would make one.

I am a failure at many things, but the thing I am best at is killing. And I am very good at it.

Let it not be said that Itachi Uchiha wasn't tenacious.

Even in the body of a baby...

My mother finally settled down... somewhere.

I tried to look around to figure out where in the world I was but all I did was flop my head to the side awkwardly as my weak muscles protested against holding my head up. Wow, I was aware that babies were supposed to be like, really weak. But this was just ridiculous. My entire body felt slow and sluggish. Is this what all babies felt like? If that was the case then the miserable critters constant crying made sense.

I paused when confusion warred its way to the forefront of my mind.

My mother was unbuttoning her blouse.

Why was she unbuttoning her blouse?

"Here you go Itachi-kun. Be a good boy and drink up!"

_What the actual fuck!_

_~Hunted~_

If this was a genjutsu, someone had gone to incredible lengths to set it up. I was dead. At least I was supposed to be. Wherever this was, wherever I was, it had to be a trick.

It had to be.

For the sake of my very sanity, which was already pretty questionable, I needed this whole thing to be one big illusion. Because, for the first time in my wretched, miserable life, I was facing an enemy I could not possibly defeat. An enemy so powerful and unbeatable that the very idea of facing it was laughable.

At least for me.

This enemy could crack my fragile psyche with almost no effort. An enemy called hope.

It latched against my cold, cold heart, like a bloodthirsty leech and refused to let go. I wished to go back to whichever abyss of darkness the shinigami had dragged me out of. Unfortunately, getting out wasn't going to be so easy. I'd tried every single trick known to me, and I knew a lot of them, to break out of this illusionary world. None of them worked. In fact, I'd go so far as to say they worked exactly as they would if there were no illusions to break.

Everything I saw pointed towards only one conclusion.

I was reborn in the past.

To my own parents.

With my memories of the future intact.

_~Hunted~_

_This is eerie._

I looked around interestedly, finally able to move my head independently.

We weren't in our compound. I'd surmised as much a month ago, in fact, I was pretty sure we weren't even in Konoha and I really wanted to understand why. Not only that, but I _needed__ to understand why._

Because, the only Uchiha I ever saw were my parents.

No Shisui, no Yashiro or Setsumi. Nobody.

In fact, we were living in a veritable shack. A tiny little thing of a house, amateurishly built and in the middle of nowhere.

I had a bad feeling about this.

All signs pointed towards the fact that we were in hiding and that along with the lack of any other Uchiha led me to the obvious conclusions that either we were missing-nin, or everybody else was dead, or that the Uchiha clan as a whole was scattered and in hiding because we were being _hunted_.

Had we betrayed Konoha already? That wasn't supposed to happen until after the Kyuubi attack. So that couldn't be it.

If the hushed conversations mother and father had were anything to go by, then a deeper, more sinister secret was behind our current exile and the absence of other Uchiha in our life. They did that frequently, I observed, my mother gesticulating wildly and more often than not breaking down, while my stoic, unbending father _comforted her tenderly. _It was such an odd sight that I didn't quite know what to make of it.

As long as I'd known him, my father had been a perfect study in the art of typical Uchiha stoicism. A ninja who contained useless sentiments behind a veneer of calm practicality. _This _wasn't expected.

A faint sound reached my ears, and my ears perked up. Even if I couldn't make out the words, the irritable tenor of Mikotos voice rang clear. What were they arguing over now, I wondered.

Closing my eyes, I forced the meager amount of chakra present in my few months old body to my ears.

"...followed?", Mikoto asked agitatedly.

A pause.

"I am unsure", came Fugakus reply, sounding decidedly indecisive.

_Smack._

The sound of flesh hitting flesh.

"We only just settled down here!", Mikotos voice exclaimed shrilly, "How could you be so careless!"

With a start I realised that my gentle as a light summers breeze mother had slapped my father.

"We just settled and now we shall be leaving", came the curt response, before the tone softened, "I am not the ninja I was once, Miko-chan, I make mistakes too, you know this. Hold yourself together for Itachi's sake. We need to _leave _as soon as possible"

A sob.

Mother was crying.

"Is this never going to end. Will we never know peace?"

A faint rustling of clothes, and I deduced that father had pulled mother into an embrace.

"We'll find a way out of this Miko-chan. Like we always do, you and me, we're the best team out there and together, we can prevail against anyone who stands against us"

"Thats not what I asked!", Mikoto protested.

"Mikoto...", Fugaku trailed off.

The silence that followed was only broken by my mothers quiet sniffing.

"I promise you this Miko-chan", Fugaku started tenderly, "Even if we are doomed to this life, I swear Itachi won't be. You hear me? I swear it. This ends with us"

"Okay...", Mikoto replied weakly, "That's all I've ever asked for Fugu-kun"

A little shuffling before harried footsteps came closer and my mother entered the only other room in our house, the room that served as a bedroom for the three of us, and I went back to feigning sleep. It wasn't strictly required for me to do so. After all, who would suspect a baby of spying? But I was so used to sneaking about that it was instinct.

She moved about rapidly as if gathering things and then with gentle hands, she placed me in a makeshift cradle-sack tied around her midsection. When the cool morning air hit my face, I finally opened my eyes, and looked around inquisitively.

With watery eyes and a small smile, my mother kissed the top of my head and then we were off. Her, my father and I.

My body was not strong enough to sustain wakefulness for long periods and so, to my intense chagrin, I slipped into a deep yet uncomfortable slumber.

_~Hunted~_

When I woke next, it was to my mothers frantic cries. Something thick and wet was coating my back. I strained all my six month old faculties to try and understand the situation we were in.

The wetness against my back felt a lot like blood.

"Fugaku, oh my god Fugaku! Stay with me!"

My blood went cold.

_No._

I wriggled against the sack I was in to look at my father.

His face was slack and thick rivulets of blood ran down his chest, his body limp against a half burnt tree stump. There were two gaping holes in his torso, one right under where his rib cage started and the other piercing his right shoulder.

_No__!_

My eyes burned. I'd only just got him back.

My entire being _screamed_ against his death.

My father who was a man of hidden depths.

_"Our philosophies may differ but I am proud of you."_

My father who'd decided he'd rather die at the hands of his rogue son than harm him.

_"You truly are a kind child, Itachi"_

My father who'd done for me what I'd done for Sasuke.

The burning in my eyes intensified, nearly blinding in its fury, before my vision sharpened and became clearer.

"Oh god!", my mother gasped in horrified wonderment, a hand going to her mouth, "Sharingan..."

I ignored her, because of course my sharingan was active. This incident certainly qualified as traumatic enough for it to awaken in this lifetime.

That I was the youngest Uchiha to ever have awakened it was something that did not occur to me. Nor did I think about the far reaching consequences of what this would do to my mother. Although, in my defense, with the limited information available to me, I had no way of deducing the horrible decision she would make only a few hours from now, being properly horrified of the 'curse' that they'd unwittingly bestowed upon me.

Because just that instant I'd seen my fathers chest rise and fall slightly and his clenched eyes opened.

_He was still alive_.

"Miko-chan", a weak gurgling gasp, "Take Itachi and leave"

It was clear to me then, that despite the enormity of me awakening my sharingan, my mother had more pressing concerns right now. Hands twisting in a seal, she cast a very under-powered sleep genjutsu on me, presumably to spare my eyes from seeing more than I already had.

I pretended that I'd let it pull me under even if, to my chagrin, it was a_ very close _thing.

"Not without you", Mikoto insisted back, "Definitely not without you"

And then I felt her hands making more seals, and the temperature rose rapidly.

"Stubborn stubborn woman!", Fugaku complained, "You're wasting time!"

"Brace yourself", Mikoto replied, ignoring him, "This is going to hurt"

The sound of sizzling echoed and my father grunted before the smell of burnt flesh assaulted my senses. Mother was cauterizing fathers wounds, I deduced, and probably using a red-hot kunai to do so.

_Good._

Father was going to survive, things weren't as bad as I'd initially believed. It was only a few minutes later, once Mikoto was done, that Fugaku spoke again, "The one who escaped. He'll be back with reinforcements"

Mikoto nodded, "He will"

"I will slow the two of you down, Miko-chan", Fugaku said lightly, "You should go ahead"

A pause.

"I can carry you with me. We've done this before Fugu-kun"

"Not with Itachi-kun, we haven't. They'll catch up with us in half a week at most"

A shuddering breath.

_"Fugu-kun"_

"It's the only way, Miko-chan"

"You'll be slaughtered right here!", she cried, "I won't allow that, you stupid stupid man!"

"I'm not so injured that I can't move. In fact, I'll lead them away from you two", Fugaku replied faintly, rising to his feet and bracing a hand against the tree he was slumped against, "Who knows, I might even survive and find you again"

His words were empty. I knew it, and so did my mother. The way he was right now, he would drop from sheer overexertion in mere hours and succumb to his injuries in a day.

A deep and boiling hatred welled up from within me. This couldn't be happening. Not now, not like this.

Again, I wondered if this was a cruel joke planned by the shinigami. The set up designed to play on my most hated fears.

If it was, he had chosen the best possible nightmare to torture me with.

"Okay", Mikoto replied weakly, giving a false smile for my fathers benefit, "I'll be waiting for you under the waterfall on the outskirts of Tanzaku Gai, the place where we first met. We've been in grass country long enough anyway"

"That we have Miko-chan", Fugaku commented, bending down to kiss my brow, "Be a good boy for your mother, Itachi-kun", he whispered.

Emotions roiling from the roller coaster ride that my life was, I stayed limp and unresponsive, obediently pretending to be under mothers genjutsu.

"Take care Miko-chan", Fugaku said tenderly cupping the side of my mothers face with one hand, before taking to the trees.

There was a brief pause.

"Take care, Fugu-kun", My mother whispered, voice breaking.

The last sight I had of the devastated forest clearing was of a metal headband with 4 squiggly lines.

It was then that I decided that, pacifism be damned, Kirigakure was going to _pay_ for hunting down the Uchiha clan.

_~Hunted~_

My mother was an accomplished Kunoichi who could be as merciless as a seasoned Kage when the situation demanded it.

But when it came to family, she was like a delicate and fragile flower more often than not. She simply cared too much.

I'd learned early on that being Uchiha meant being disassociated from ones emotions. Not because emotions were a weakness in and of themselves, like the shinobi of old believed, but because my clan felt a little too deeply and reacted a little too strongly.

We needed to disassociate ourselves so that we could think objectively. Our sentimentality was our greatest weakness, and many an Uchiha had burned himself when succumbing to the blind rage that was categorically exclusive to our clan. Not being able to forget anything our accursed eyes saw inevitably pushed us over the edge.

It was understandable.

Action and reaction.

A mans psyche could only take so much before it broke down. Vividly remembering the death of one comrade was bad enough. But when you remembered the death of _every comrade _with crystal clarity for as long as you lived...

It was no wonder that the strongest Uchiha were also the most insane Uchiha. Because the strongest ones among us were the first to respond when shit hit the fan. And me? At the very least, I was approaching insanity.

My mother, accomplished though she was, was not the strongest Uchiha around, and that made all the difference in the world. She thought more clearly and could choose the best option from a wide variety of bad options, even if her decisions were skewed because she thought with her heart and right now, I couldn't presume to understand what was going on in her mind. She'd just left her husband to certain death after fighting to make sure he would survive for just a little longer.

So, when the sound of civilisation reached my ears only mere hours after we'd absconded, and my mother swiftly corrected course and began heading _towards_ the sound, I wondered if I was mistaken about her sanity.

Missing-nin 101: When pursued, unless fatally injured, head away from civilization.

This was basic stuff. She couldn't not know it.

I opened my eyes, peering about. And if my abrupt shift to wakefulness surprised her, my mother did not show it. Perhaps she'd already sensed that I was only pretending to sleep. That there was something fundamentally different about her baby.

The village when it came to view was a quaint little thing. A collection of pieced together houses and huts, surrounded by the false security of a worn out wooden wall. From the top of the hill that overlooked it, I took the village in. There couldn't be more than a couple hundred people living in it.

Slowing down, my mother walked the rest of the way downhill.

She looked down at me, eyes brimming with tears.

"Sorry Itachi-kun, but your darling father needs me"

_Where did that come from?_

Chakra coming to the fore, she weaved a simple genjutsu around herself to hide the sight and smell of the blood and gore. Next came a henge, and she transformed into an unassuming, mousy faced, brown haired woman.

Totally forgettable features. She was good at this.

When she reached the gates, two stern looking men came forward.

"Whatcha want eh, miss?", came the gruff query, the mans beaded eyes narrowed in suspicion, "And where are you coming from?"

My mother simply smiled, her eyes flashing red and darting from one man to another.

"Can you tell me where the orphanage is?", she inquired politely.

_Ah._

_So that is what was going on._

In retrospect, I should have seen it coming the moment she began heading here.

Her sanity was still very much intact. The best option from a bunch of bad options indeed.

And no matter how much I wanted to stay with her, and she would've wanted me to stay with her too. She'd decided that life on the run with her was not the life she wanted for me. Six months old and already traumatized enough to possess the sharingan must only have made her decision easier.

This way she could save my father too, so I couldn't really complain.

Five minutes later, we were in the orphanage. More precisely inside the matrons very room, which happened to be empty.

She placed me on the single cot, hands forming signs.

I recognized the sequence.

It was an Uchiha clan Kinjutsu, meant to temporarily seal away the Sharingan in those who awakened it too early.

At six months, she clearly deemed me too young to possess our clans dojutsu.

For obvious reasons.

A wet kiss was pressed to my brow. I was getting a lot of those today.

"I love you so much Itachi-chan. Grow well, and grow strong. May Amaterasu bless you, and Susano'o shield you from harm", she sniffed, eyes bright with unshed tears, "I'm going to go and save your stupid father from himself now"

And that is how, I, Itachi Uchiha, second most famous missing-nin of Konoha and all around badass shinobi, lost my family for the second time.

At least, I consoled myself, I wasn't the one killing them this time.

A/N: So, what do you think? Good? Bad?

Reviews are food for the soul.


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